Six Degrees of Separation

This was my sole understanding of subject matter, before I read Six Degrees by Watts, and also Esther’s post.

 

Right, a ‘degree of separation’ is a measure of social distance between people. I am one degree away from everyone I know, two degrees away from everyone they know, and so on. So, the theory proposes that I am actually just 6 introductions away from Emma Watson, which is sweet because Microsoft proves the theory actually stands. Watts himself also conducted an experiment, called ‘Primetime’. It was a test that pitted real people against each other in a race to see who could connect themselves to a random third individual in a non-conventional way (obviously). 60,000 people participated, and of the hundreds of chains that have been completed, Watts says the average link is 6. Kevin Bacon also has a website, called Six Degrees, dedicated to donations all across the globe.

 

In his paper, Six Degrees, along with his mentor, Steve Strogatz, he mentioned that they often came back to the question of how individual behaviour affects collective behaviour. In page 24, one of the many question he proposes,

How is it that assembling a large collection of components into a system results in something different altogether different from just a disassociated collection of components?

 (Please forgive me if my usage of the term ‘football’ is different, but from where I came from, football means soccer) An example here would be the basic structure of a football team – goalkeeper, defenders, midfielders, and forwards. If these components are not properly associated together, they would just be footballers without a role. But if these people are sorted based on their skill set, they would form a team.

Watts also mentioned synchrony in terms of how scientists from different fields struggle to understand one another. Same goes to a game of football, the forwards definitely don’t have the mindset of defenders, and a goalkeeper doesn’t have the mindset of a midfielder, but all of them are needed to win a match. In order for a team to be successful, it does not depend entirely on their individual skills, but also other components in the system to compliment it. Watts uses an example of a group of runners,

In oscillator terms, the pack represents a synchronized state, and whether or not the system synchronizes depends both on the distribution of intrinsic frequencies and on the coupling strength.

 

This is where a manager comes in. He carefully picks players that he’d think will work really well together and ultimately win them matches.